


Her Forests

by silverjewelkitten



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, always in a forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverjewelkitten/pseuds/silverjewelkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of her, washing over him like water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be part of a series about the Doctor's dreams. I'm trying to weave a fairy tale.

In the forests of his dreams, he washes his hands in the water of the river and sees himself reflected in his palms. And in the corner of his eyes he sees her, always her; red fingernails ghosting on his shoulders, a halo of blonde curls falling around her face. She does not speak but her hands lead him up and he walks with her along the banks, fingers tethered so tight he might never let go.

He remembers her goodbye as vividly as he remembers her name, and the way it rolls off of his tongue in waves, like he can’t stop saying it. “River.” He says, and she looks at him, her eyes glazed and her skin translucent. He stops walking and his arm extends to hold her back. “Please don’t leave.” He does not fall to his knees and beg, though it is a near thing.

Her fingers turn to liquid in his grip and she returns to the river from where she came. He listens to the gentle sway of the current, and the howling wind, and he opens his arms wide as if to become it. The gusts whisper, “You are forgiven.” 

He wakes with the phantom reminder of her touch, drenched in sweat, head bowed over the tardis console. There is snow in London, but he sits atop his cloud, burning from the inside out, parched, and dreaming of water.


	2. The Woman Made of Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is heavily based on an incredible River/Eleven fic I read a while back. I hope you guys enjoy it!

There was a man known as the Doctor, a man who wasn’t really a man at all. This Doctor had a magic box, a box as ancient as he was, a box that could travel the stars of every galaxy and save worlds hanging on the precipice of destruction.   
He was a very lonely Doctor, and as he aged and the centuries passed, he became a man with darkness looming like a cloak around his shoulders, darkness that seeped into his skin and down to his bones, and even into his very soul. No matter how many worlds he saved, how many people he protected, he never saved enough.

He was the last of his kind, having eradicated entire civilizations during a great war, and one of those civilizations was his own. Gallifrey, the home of the Time Lords, a noble race who stood silent vigil over all of time and space. And since he had been unable to save his own kind, no amount of good he did could ever erase the billions of deaths he had wrought by his own hand. No water could wash clean the blood from his hands.

There were many who traveled with him, this lonely Doctor, this old, sad man with two hearts and his magic box, and they loved him, but in the end, they broke his heart, as they always do. And the blood on his hands did not wash clean even as his body changed and regeneration brought with it new fingers, new skin, new muscle and bone, and yet that darkness, that crimson blood, it remained. It festered and rotted and reminded him just how old he was.

And though he washed his hands clean time and time again, he could not forget the terrible things he had done. 

He met the woman made of water, and heard her song; she was the only water in the forest that he might wash his hands clean, for the only water in the forest is the river.

And she washed over him like a tidal wave, and he felt complete when her hands fit perfectly within his, when she kissed him, when her hearts beat inside her chest, the thump-thump-thump beneath his ear when he listened.

She had blood on her hands too, and she tasted like time, and her new, old face was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

She unraveled time for him, and he married her so he would never lose the river’s song. 

And the lonely-old Doctor was not so lonely anymore when he was awash in the woman made of water, with her golden hair like a halo and her fingers wedged between his.


End file.
